The present invention relates to vend racks for a vending machine that store softdrink bottles or cans and feed the same in a cooled condition to a discharge port in the front of a vending machine in a uniform manner. More specifically, the present invention relates to modular serpentine vend rack mechanisms having the flexibility of storing selected numbers of vendable bottles or cans in a plurality of separately accessible serpentine vend columns of different capacities.
One of the most widely used conventional vend racks for bottles and cans in a vending machine includes a plurality of side-by-side, vertical storage columns, each of which communicates with a discharge port in the front of a vending machine. The columns are disposed in parallel relationship, and the quantity of vendable products therein is usually controlled by dimensioning the width of the columns to receive either a double row of nestable bottles or cans or a single stacked row of bottles or cans. These columns may either be one-deep, two-deep or three-deep, depending on the depth on the vending machine cabinet. This conventional vend rack suffers from the disadvantage that there is little flexibility in choice of the number of vendable products that can be stored in the respective columns. Therefore, it is difficult to match product demand with storage capacity for any given column for a vending machine of this type which conventionally contains from five to nine selectable products and from seven to ten columns.
The demand for different types of products may depend on sales location or general popularity. In addition, in vending machines such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,380,130 to Bachmann, et al., issued Apr. 19, 1983 and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention, product sales or demand is also influenced, for example, by the unique styling of a given vending machine. For instance, if the vending machine includes the use of an enlarged primary product selection button adjacent the coin slot of the vending machine, there will be a distinct need for more flexibility in product storage and delivery from the respective chutes of a vend rack. This need is to accommodate the vending format of that machine. The need to match product demand with storage capacity exists, however, for all machines which vend multiple products.
One attempt to provide greater column selectivity in a vender is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,245,755 to Craven et al. In Craven, some increased selectivity is achieved by a communicating slant shelf extension of a column for which the storage capacity is to be increased. However, even the Craven apparatus has limited selectivity.